Review: A Rogue of My Own by Johanna Lindsey

Reviewed by Shelly

I have a few favorite authors and Johanna Lindsey is one of them. The thing is, I like her earlier stories – Savage Thunder is one of my all time favorite books. I still have my treasured paperback with the requisite dogged ears. Sigh – I have to go re-read that soon. But I digress.

I didn’t care for this the 3rd story in the Reid Family series, and I’ll be honest, I didn’t read the 1st or the 2nd book in the series, so I don’t know how this one stands up against those 2. Compared to many of Lindsey’s other works, this one wasn’t what I expected, but then again, I have high expectations from her.

The youthful 18 year-old Rebecca Marshall has just made it to court. She’s to be a maid of honor to the Queen. It’s a four year stint, and she must remain an unmarried woman to occupy the post. During her first day, after some shenanigans from her new roommate, Rebecca runs into her personal ‘angel’ marquis Rupert St. John. She knows of her ‘angel’ as she’s seen his face before, but she’s not been formally introduced and she’s unaware of his name (that will cause some consternation later). Rupert’s at court not for the business that Rebecca initially thinks, but because he’s there on spy business.

There’s much about these two that I should have liked, but they actually came off stilted and –I don’t know– not very likable. One of the things that I didn’t really care for was how quickly Rebecca fell into bed with Rupert. She’s not a ninny and this a historical romance, so it was a bit of a jar for me and I was unclear why she would fall for his obvious signs of terrible (as in not well done) seduction.

Rupert starts off not trusting Rebecca at all and thinking that she’s basically an inept spy, and I really didn’t like the way he treated her. I thought he spoke down to her a lot, and I’m still scratching my head to figure out when he fell in love with her and vice versa.

Rebecca, oh that poor sweet child. She actually thought that Rupert would believe her news after they had sex. His derision of her left me cold for him, and I couldn’t find it anywhere in me to actually like him. Then her on again off again adoration for Rupert started getting on my nerves, because I couldn’t understand how she kept coming back for more of his ridicule. I kept wondering where the story was actually going with them as a couple, and to be perfectly honest, I didn’t care for them together.

The best part of the story was their trek to France, now that was fun.